quicklook
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BetterZip Quick Look Generator shows contents of archive files
In response to an article about Archive Utility's preferences, a reader asked if there was a way to show the contents of an archived file. I used to have a QuickLook plugin for this, but it stopped working at some point and I had never gotten around to finding a new one. The BetterZip Quick Look generator works fine for me under Snow Leopard, and supports QuickLook for the contents of a huge number of various archives. According to the website, it supports ZIP, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ARJ, LZH, ISO, CHM, CAB, CPIO, RAR, 7-Zip, DEB, RPM, StuffIt's SIT, DiskDoubler, BinHex, and MacBinary. Or, to put it another way, it supports all the formats you are ever likely to come across, plus about 5 more. Simply download the file (from the page above), and install it either to /Library/QuickLook/ (if you want the plugin to work for anyone who logs into the machine) or ~/Library/QuickLook/ if you want it to just work for the current user. If you have never installed a QuickLook plugin before, you may need to create that folder. Note that although the feature is called "Quick Look" the folder name should not have a space in it. Then you need to restart the Quick Look framework. This either requires waiting (if you're the patient kind), logging out/rebooting, restarting the Finder (according to the website, but that didn't work for me), or open Terminal and type qlmanage -r which is what I did, and it started to work immediately (you should see a message "qlmanage: resetting quicklookd" after you enter the command). BetterZip QuickLook Generator is a free plugin by the folks at MacItBetter.com who also make a $20 program called BetterZip which gives you a whole host of options for creating and managing archives. I haven't used it myself, but it looks pretty impressive if you want some advanced options for archives. Our own Brett Terpstra reviewed it back in May if you'd like more information. Dave Caolo also mentioned BetterZip Quick Look Generator in his 2008 article 10 ways to get the most out of Quick Look. If you want to learn more about additional Quick Look plugins, that's a good place to start.
Rumor: Scrolling, QuickLook and Spotlight updated for 10.7
Apple's next big event is less than 24 hours away and the rumor mill is still running full force. We've already seen a lot of speculation about the upcoming MacBook Air revision. This latest batch of rumors is about some of the interface changes that we might see for Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion." Macstories.net suggests that scrolling is likely to get a major update in both form and function; likely as not the scroll bars are going to disappear. Presumably, they will be similar to the iOS scroll bars that are only visible when you're using them. This will be a welcome change to the bubbly bars from the Aqua interface which have not changed in a long time.
Mac 101: Zoom in and out while in Quick Look
Here's a neat trick if you want to zoom in on an image while using Quick Look. Hold down the Option key while your mouse is hovered over the image, and it will change to a magnifying glass. Once you've zoomed in, drag the cursor, use the scroll wheel, or two fingers on a trackpad to move around the image. Press Option-Shift, and then click on the picture to zoom out. To see this tip in action, check out the brief video above. Nothing too complicated, but definitely a fun and easy way, built directly into the OS, to browse around and inspect a picture file without opening a much heftier app like Photoshop. [Via Mac OS X Hints]
iPhone OS 4.0: Over 100 new features
During today's Apple live event, it was noted that over 100 new features are being added to iPhone OS 4.0. We captured some of that information, and list just a few new features here for your reading pleasure: QuickLook: The feature everyone loves in Mac OS X now comes to iPhone and iPad Folder Storage: You can now have up to 2,160 apps on your iPhone through the use of folders Full app access to still and video data iBooks on iPhone: A smaller version of the iBooks app for the iPhone platform. Unified inbox for Mail: At last, all of your emails go can be viewed in one inbox; no more switching between inboxes. You can also have multiple Exchange accounts. The emails can be organized by threads, much in the same way that they are in Mail.app on the Mac. Wireless App Distribution: Companies that create custom in-house apps no longer need to distribute those through a "wired" connection; employees can now install the apps from anywhere, anytime. Homescreen Wallpaper, Bluetooth Keyboards: The iPhone and iPod touch will get these features that are now on the iPad. Fast app switching Background location: Apps can stay updated with location information even when you switch to another app. Selective use of location: Location can be enabled or disabled on an app-by-app basis. Local notifications: like push notification, but not requiring server access. It's all done on the phone. Task completion: Items that take some time can now complete in background while other work is going on in foreground. For example, uploading an image to Flickr can happen in background while you're doing something else. iAds: Developers get 60% of the ad revenue by adding interactive iAds to their apps. You can add fully interactive advertisements without taking people out of your app. Address and Date data detectors: Just like those in Mail.app in Mac OS X, these add information to Address Book and Calendar with a tap. More detail on individual features will be forthcoming. Stay tuned to TUAW all day today for all of your iPhone OS 4.0 news.
TUAW Tips: Get a better view with Quick Look
Quick Look is such an awesome feature of Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6, making it really fun and easy to view files and folders from anywhere on your Mac. But what happens when you have a folder with multiple items and want to get a better idea of what's inside? Well, you could always just open the folder in Finder, but there's a cool modification you can make to get an even quicker view. You can get this working on your Mac in a few simple steps: Quit/Relaunch Finder using the Force Quit menu Open Terminal Paste (or type) the following command: defaults write com.apple.Finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1 Relaunch Finder The contents of the folder will now be shown when you use Quick Look. In true Apple elegance, the files will even fade and cycle through the contents. [via Mac OS X Hints]
TUAW Tip: Add file extensions to Quick Look
TUAW reader David wrote us to ask how he could view .erb files (Rails development) in Quick Look. The fact is, there are a lot of plain-text files with extensions that Quick Look doesn't recognize. It's relatively straightforward to tell Quick Look to treat these files like any other text file and preview them as plain text; it does require diving into plist files and possibly breaking an application, so don't dive in unless you're comfortable and fully backed up. Read on for a short tour of Quick Look hacking basics ...
Mac 101: Zoom and pan images in Quick Look
Is your laptop not among those that can do Multi-touch? Don't feel badly, you can replicate those great features!Well, kind of. First, open an image with Quick Look. Next, hold down the Option key while performing a two-finger scroll. The image zooms in and out! Finally, let go of the Option key but keep your fingers in place on your trackpad. The cursor turns into a four-point directional, and then you can pan the image within the Quick Look window.This also works with a mouse and scrollwheel.Thanks, Max!
Flow goes 1.0
Flow, a pleasant FTP client for the Mac, has definitely come a long way since we last took a look at it (so very long ago). Flow just hit version 1.0, and here are some of the new features: QuickLook Built-in editor FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, .Mac, and local FTP Droplets to upload quickly Flow is designed specifically for Mac OS X Leopard (version 10.5). Flow costs just $29; you can also download a free 15-day trial version then buy a license. I am an adamant Transmit/Panic addict; however, Flow has such a great Aqua-licious UI and feature list, that I may make the jump (sorry Panic guys).Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Leopard Love: QuickLook Apps
Last night, Mike Rose pointed me to this great Leopard tip that allows you to turn your Application folder into a full-screen app viewer. Here's what you do. Navigate to /Applications and select the entire folder (Edit > Select All or Command-A). Next, tap the space bar, click the full-screen arrows and click the Index Sheet button. Bingo: instant full-screen viewer goodness. Update: My bad. It won't launch the apps -- just displays their icons quicklook-ishly. Still cool. Thanks Sebastiaan!
Quicklook your downloads automatically
Here's a great trick from Macosxhints.com -- set up your Mac to automatically preview all downloads with Quick Look.It's a simple two-step process. First, install the Quick Look Droplet, a simple application that displays any file with Quick Look. Next, set your browser preference to automatically open certain file types (say, PDFs, Word documents and JPGs) with the droplet. It's much snappier than launching Preview or Word.[Via Lifehacker]
Quick Look Suspicious Packages
As I've noted before, I'm a huge fan of Quick Look and I eagerly follow the third-party plugins released by developers. A new one came along recently that's worth a look, especially for the security-conscious out there. Suspicious Package will let you use Quick Look to examine the contents of standard installer packages before you install them. You can navigate folder structure and have a look at what it contains with one click. Of course you can do this manually by right-clicking in the Finder and choosing "Show Package Contents," but this makes it that much easier to do a quick check. Unfortunately, it does not work yet on 'mpkg' meta-packages. Suspicious Package is a free download from Mother Ruin Software.Update: As a commenter below notes, "Show Package Contents" only shows the contents, not where they will install.[via QuickLook Plugins List]
10 ways to get the most out of Quick Look
When Steve first demonstrated Quick Look, I though it looked gimmicky. Interesting, for sure, but nothing I'd use regularly. Much like Star Wars Episode I: Fun when viewed for the first time, but I'll never watch it again.Three months later, Quick Look is my favorite feature of Leopard. It's convenient, useful and very fast. With a tap of the space bar, I can identify files in the Finder without having to open a separate application.Of course, it goes beyond that. With a little effort (and in some cases, plug-ins), you can get even more out of Quick Look. Here's how. Identify files on remote machines. I've been using Remote Desktop at my day job for a couple of years now. With a few clicks, I can observe or control a remote Mac. Leopard brings this convenience to home users with Screen Sharing. It's useful, but files appear quite tiny when viewed on this screen-within-a-screen (and titles even smaller). Fortunately, Quick Look makes things much more legible. Preview the contents of Zip files (plug-in required). BetterZip and the Zip Quick Look Plug-in both let you view the contents of a zipped file with Quick Look. In fact, Zip Quick Look's display is dependent on a HTML file which you may alter to your liking. Here's how to install Quick Look plug-ins. Preview the contents of a folder (plug-in required). Much like BetterZip and Zip Quick Look, the Folder List plug-in lets you preview the contents of a folder. You can also customize its HTML-powered display and show or hide hidden files or time stamps. Examine snippets of code with syntax highlighting intact. Here's another tip that requires a plug-in. Qlcolorcode lets you preview your code with all the helpful highlighting you expect. Examine files in the trash. Until Leopard, the Finder's trash would keep its contents to itself. Anything you wanted to examine had to be moved back to the desktop. Fortunately, Quick Look lets you preview trashed items. Now you know precisely which item to yank out of there. Prep your iWork documents for use with Quick Look. When you create a document with Numbers, Pages or Keynote, you can ensure that its preview will display the proper formatting by selecting the Include Preview in Document check box whey you save (or turn this feature on by default in the general preference pane). Enhance TextMate. TextMate is the editor that geeks everywhere love (including the geeks at TUAW). Ciarán Walsh has written two Quick Look plug-ins for TextMate that let you preview items in a project or render Quick Look previews (for certain file types) using the TextMate syntax highlighter, respectively. Preview fonts. Open a Finder window, select Cover Flow view and navigate to the font you're interested in. Click the space bar and presto! Instant preview. Quick Look and Cover Flow. I love the combination of Cover Flow and Quick Look. Open a bulging folder in the Finder and select Cover Flow view. Tap the space bar to preview the 1st file and then use the arrow keys to move the next one and so on. You'll stay in Quick Look mode! Very cool. Send images to iPhoto. When viewing an image with Quick Look - either from the Finder or attached to a Mail message - you'll see a tiny iPhoto icon at the bottom of the window. Click it to send that image to iPhoto. I hope you found these tips useful. And I still dislike Episode I.
FileSpot 2.1 released: Supercharged Spotlight interface
Synthesis Studios has released version 2.1 of FileSpot (formerly MoRU), their advanced interface for Spotlight. It allows you to make advanced, boolean logic queries and makes accessible some of the more complex aspects of Spotlight. Not to make it sound complicated, though, its iTunes-ish interface is pretty simple to use. It also adds file tagging with support for other 3rd party tagging apps like Spotmeta. This release adds two great features: Quick Look support and search results that display as they're located rather than waiting for the search to complete. Both features definitely make my day.FileSpot has a 30 day trial period and costs $20 to register.
Quick Look Plugin sites
It should be clear by now that I love Leopard's Quick Look, particularly because of the modular way that Apple designed it so that it can be expanded and extended by third parties. And those third parties are responding! To keep track of all these plugins two interesting new sites have sprung up, QuickLook Plugins List and QLPlugins.Each site has some good stuff not on the other so it's worth keeping an eye on both. Highlights include a neat trick for expanding video format support to mkv (Matroska video) files (and in principle others) and a plugin for Flash FLV files. (Both of these require Perian.)In the years to come I suspect we're going to look back and wonder how we ever got along without Quick Look.Thanks to everyone who sent these in!
Leopard love: Quick Look works on files in the Trash
One of my Mac OS pet peeves from way, way back is how the Finder handles a double-click to a file in the Trash. Sure, I know that opening the file may prevent me from effectively emptying the Trash, but I really would love to know what's in that graphic I tossed weeks ago before I wantonly delete it. Wouldn't it make more sense to open a temporary version of the file, or have that dialog offer to move the file back to my Desktop for me? C'mon, Apple, throw me a bone here.Much to my glee and moderate surprise, Quick Look works like a charm on files that are trashed; that's exactly what I need to check that the files I'm throwing out are actually what they purport to be (not that I'd throw out the TUAW logo, that's just an example of a file I need to rescue). The more time I spend with Leopard, the more I'm convinced that Quick Look, as humble and subtle as it is, may actually be the killer feature of 10.5.
Take a CandyBar 3 video tour
If you've ever used CandyBar before, you probably already grabbed version 3 when it was released the other day. But just in case you haven't seen it in action, Ged put together this great screencast of just how easy it makes controlling the look of your icons and Dock. I especially love the icons inside the iContainers in Quick Look-- such a neat, useful touch that's only possible in Leopard.CandyBar, I think, is one of those apps that sounds like you'll never use it when you just read the text (because how often do you change your system icons, really), but once you see just how amazing it is, you can tell it's one of those reasons we're so proud to be Mac owners. I know, I sound like an infomercial, but look at that app! CandyBar 3 is available as a free 15-day/250-icon limit trial, or for the purchase price of $29.
Quick Look Folder and Zip plugins
Quick Look is a beautiful thing, and in my view practically itself worth the cost of admission to Leopard. Unfortunately, the more you get used to it, the more annoying it is when you get to a file format that Quick Look doesn't support. Fortunately, Apple was smart enough to design Quick Look with an open architecture that allows developers to write their own plugins and support more file formats, which Japanese developer Taiyo used to write two excellent plugins.The first addresses a serious annoyance with the default Quick Look implementation on folders. If you invoke Quick Look with a folder selected in the Finder you'll get...a picture of the folder icon. Frankly, that's pretty stupid. Taiyo's Folder Quick Look Plugin fixes this by displaying the folder's contents, which is how it should have been done in the first place. Likewise, Taiyo's Zip Quick Look Plugin displays the contents of zip files.I'm sure we'll be seeing more and more of these expansions of Quick Look in the days ahead, which will make this quintessential Leopard feature that much more useful. Both the Folder Quick Look Plugin and the Zip Quick Look Plugin are free downloads. Place them in your /Library/QuickLook/ or ~/Library/QuickLook/ folders and they should work immediately.[via Digg]
Delicious Library 2 will track your media and your tools
Scott Stevenson has taken another look at a program I am pretty much drooling over at this point-- Delicious Library 2. Earlier, he walked us through the overview of all the items in your library, and this time, he goes a little more in depth on what the app can tell you about each item that you own.First off, everything is Quicklook-capable and can be viewed in CoverFlow, which is awesome. You can thumb through your books just with a few keystrokes. You can share your library via .Mac and Bonjour, which means while using Wi-Fi at Barnes and Noble, you can actually get book recommendations from anyone else on the network with you.Finally, Scott reveals a strange but interesting new feature. Apparently, in its pre-release incarnation, you can also track tools. That's right-- the screenshot above is not Photoshopped (not by us, at least). Scott even suggests there might be other possessions to track, but we'll have to wait for the official release to see just what the Delicious team have cooked up.
Fuzzmeasure Pro 3 leverages Leopard for audio measurement
Reader Sebastiaan sends word that Fuzzmeasure Pro 3 is out (and that he designed the icon for it-- very nice). Released on the three-year anniversary of the first version's release, the update has a host of new features, including integration with Leopard's Core Audio, the sweet audio graphs that the app is known for, and even Quicklook and Safari plugins. It's been used to set up concert systems for "...Linkin Park and other big name bands around the world." Cool!As you may have guessed from reading "Core Audio" and "Quicklook", Fuzzmeasure Pro 3 is Leopard-only (and loving it). You can download it (and eventually buy it for $150US) over on SuperMegaUltraGroovy's website.
Seven cool features of Leopard that might get stubborn friends to upgrade
There are dozens of little niceties in Leopard: like how Front Row now lives on my iBook (sans remote) and allows me to operate the thing as a sort of thin-client media jukebox (courtesy a Mac mini server). Or how Font Book now prints books of your fonts (especially nice for those non-techies). With the 300+ new features, I still have yet to fully explore this thing, but I'm certainly starting to believe this is the Mac OS Apple really wanted to deliver a few years back. There's no doubt in my mind this is a big turning point for the platform, and I really believe user adoption in 2008 will be unprecedented as a result.Following is a list of features and specific "cool things" I think you can point out if you are trying to explain to a friend why they should upgrade. For the record, I installed Leopard on a 1.24 GHz iBook G4, and it runs beautifully, which in itself is a selling point.1. Finally, a Record button for your actions Automator now has a UI recorder. Anyone who remembers the good old days of macro recorders before OS 8 will look at this and sigh, but I, for one, welcome my new robot overlord. Automator is finally useful for mortals with UI recording. Oh sure, it isn't perfect, but it really beats trying to explain just the concept of Automator to the average human. Never mind the metaphors and the workflow within Automator itself -- eyes will glaze over. UI recording is absolute heaven when you do a lot of drudge work, like contracts, filling, prepping photos, etc.2. Mail gets GTD fever If power users turn up their noses at Stationary in Mail, point out how they can now put their notes, to-do's and RSS into Mail. I haven't really set all this up as I'd like yet (the iBook isn't my primary work machine), but my unfettered hatred of Mail.app is somewhat lessened now by the fact that it is starting to behave like a "real" email client. The notes and to-do's are icing on the cake, but also very important if you like to get things done and stay organized. A few smart folders and you have a truly powerful system. Still, it is disappointing to see Apple take half a decade to figure out the whole "archive mailbox" thing, but pobody's nerfect I guess.3. Web clipping makes Dashboard relevant again My wife quit using Dashboard long ago. It simply served no purpose for her. But web clipping, baked right in to Safari? That had her mildly interested. Tracking the top 3 Twitters, or whatever the top story on Perez or TMZ happens to be with a keystroke is a selling point for folks who aren't using RSS. The only downside is that you need a pretty big screen if you want more than a couple of pages to appear.4. Shared drives finally "just work" and Shared Screens work with other OS'esGranted, there have been issues with networking in Leopard, but seeing shared Macs in my sidebar? That's pretty sweet. In previous versions of OS X you had to click on Network, now it just shows up. Is a few clicks a big deal? Well, for the average user, yes, this is a big deal. The average user doesn't like to explore. They can be timid, and frankly, don't necessarily know (or care) what the Network thing even is. Displaying networked components directly in Finder will greatly increase the probability that users will at least see everything. It has already saved me time when trying to reconnect and move things around my home LAN. For me, the real fun was seeing how VNC "just worked" when I was able to access my Mac mini (which was already running as a VNC server) via Screen Sharing. Even though the mini runs Tiger, and despite a slightly wonky connection, overall it was super easy to set-up. Think about it another way: average users don't want to run a third-party application like Chicken of the VNC. Average users don't necessarily trust those apps (thank you, Bonzi Buddy) and it is a lot easier to remotely control a machine if the functionality is built into the OS. Oh, and did I mention you can share screens with Linux? I finally have a use for that old Dell laptop and my Ubuntu CD!
